Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (49 page)

The government also could do better to ensure safe food and restore trust in the food supply. Congress could help by putting consumer protection first and creating a single food agency with genuine authority over safety in the production and distribution of foods as well as over their effects on environmental and public health. Such an agency could be empowered to promote food security in all of its humanitarian aspects: reliable access, adequate quantity and quality, appropriate cultural relevance, and safety. While thinking about how to develop this agency, Congress could provide greater resources for food inspection, and give existing agencies the authority to enforce regulations, issue recalls, ensure traceability, and protect public health. One measure to reduce political influences on the FDA, for example, would be to transfer its funding decisions from agriculture committees to those devoted to health. Congress also could require genetically modified foods to be labeled—the issue that most inflames public distrust of the food biotechnology industry—and demand that the foods undergo examination of their safety and environmental effects before they are marketed.

On the international level, the government could sign and actively support treaties that promote food safety, environmental protection, and the right to food, as well as agreements to stop producing biological weapons, genetically modified or otherwise. If we are going to protect our country against bioterrorism, our government must become more actively involved
in international policies to promote health and food security as human rights for everyone, everywhere.

What can we, as individuals, do to promote such actions? We can join consumer organizations that work for environmental protection, food assistance, public health, and human rights—all of which support food safety as a necessary component of food security. We can advocate for domestic and international programs and policies directed toward those goals, and we can elect officials committed to such purposes. We can explain to our friends and colleagues that the meaning of food safety extends well beyond “cook, chill, clean, separate.” Food safety—and food security—are indicators of the integrity of our democratic institutions. They are worth our political commitment.

SINCE 2003, WHEN
SAFE FOOD
FIRST APPEARED, FOOD SAFETY ISSUES
have evolved against a background of ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, and deepening international concerns about climate change. Americans experienced revelations of abuses of corporate power, the deflation of the housing bubble, job losses, economic depression, and deep divisions in public opinion about abortion, immigration, and health care. If people now agree about anything, it is that they, as individuals, have little power to affect such events and divisions. In contrast, everyone can do something about food. The food revolution has arrived.

Signs of the food revolution are everywhere, fueled in large part by the writings of Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Slow Food’s Carlo Petrini. By the end of 2009, Pollan’s
Omnivore’s Dilemma
had been on the
New York Times
best-seller list for nearly one hundred twenty weeks. Food is now a respectable topic for academic study and much on the public agenda.
¹
Food safety ought to be part of this movement. The 2008 election of President Barack Obama inspired hope that improvements in the nation’s food system would at last be possible.

This book explores the disconnect between science- and value-based views of microbial contaminants and food biotechnology. With respect to genetically modified (GM) foods, what is most remarkable is how little
has happened to resolve the disconnect. My shelf of books about GM foods gets longer each year, yet none of them has anything new to say. Agricultural biotechnology companies such as Monsanto and other proponents of GM foods continue to insist that use of this technology is essential for meeting the food needs of the world’s expanding population, particularly in developing countries. Opponents continue to ask when the promises of food biotechnology will be fulfilled and to question its purported benefits and safety.
²
Although these conflicting views seem immovable, a few changes have occurred. Let’s take a look.

The FDA has been approving GM commodity crops since 1994, yet few are in production today. These few, however, are so widely adopted that virtually all of the corn (85 percent), cotton (88 percent), soybeans (91 percent), and sugar beets (95 percent) planted in the United States are varieties engineered to resist herbicides or insects.
³
Farmers prefer to plant GM varieties because such crops do not need to be treated with pesticides and herbicides as frequently as conventional crops. Farmers also believe that the yields of GM varieties are better. Whether such benefits are real and will last over time remains in dispute.

Despite continued international opposition, GM crops were grown in fifteen developing countries and ten industrial countries in 2008. In 2009, the European Union permitted farmers to plant only one GM crop: corn. Even so, Germany, France, Austria, Greece, Hungary, and Luxembourg banned GM corn, and Monsanto’s production of GM wheat also was expected to elicit opposition in foreign markets.
⁴

Since 1994, the FDA has approved several GM fruits and vegetables for production and marketing. But were these foods actually for sale in the produce sections of American supermarkets? When researching
What to Eat
, I found no regulator or advocate who knew. Most thought that production failures or consumer opposition kept GM produce off the market. The one GM food that seemed most likely to be available was Hawaiian papaya engineered to resist ringspot virus. In 2005, as I explained in
What to Eat
, I paid a biotechnology testing company, Genetic ID, to check several different kinds of supermarket papayas for modified genes. Indeed, the conventionally grown Hawaiian papayas tested positive. A certified organic Hawaiian papaya did not, and neither did a papaya grown in Jamaica. But because GM foods remain unlabeled, the public has no way to know.

In
chapter 8
, I discuss the travails of the Berkeley plant biology professor Ignacio Chapela, whose article in
Nature
came under attack for demonstrating that genes from GM corn had drifted into native Mexican varieties and that these genes were more unstable than others.
Nature
wished it had never accepted the article and said so publicly. Berkeley denied tenure to Professor Chapela, but later granted it after extensive protest. That the criticism of his work was the result of politics—not science—became evident when
Nature
reported that other researchers had confirmed some of his findings. Eventually,
Nature
suggested, he would probably be proved right on all counts. Nevertheless, researchers who published more recent studies critical of agricultural biotechnology have also experienced unusually forceful attacks on the quality of their work by company and other pro-GM scientists.
⁵

Late in 2004, weeds resistant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup began appearing in GM plantings in Georgia and soon spread to other Southern states. By 2009, more than one hundred thousand acres in Georgia were infested with Roundup-resistant pigweed. Planters were advised to apply multiple herbicides, thereby defeating the point of Roundup: to reduce chemical applications. In 2009, a supposedly inert surfactant in Roundup was found to kill human embryonic tissue cells. More than 250 environmental, health, and labor groups petitioned the EPA to take a closer look at the safety of solvents, preservatives, and surfactants in agricultural chemicals. “Inert” ingredients could no longer be considered benign.
⁶

Golden Rice (discussed in
chapter 5
) is the most prominent example of the public benefits of agricultural biotechnology, but ten years after its initial construction it remains a promise unfulfilled. Field trials began in 2008 and its developers hope they can produce the rice by 2011. In the interim, researchers reengineered the rice to contain higher levels of beta-carotene and demonstrated that people who ate it could, as expected, convert beta-carotene to vitamin A. Supporters of Golden Rice continue to complain about the impossible demands of regulators and anti-biotechnology
advocates. Advocates continue to argue that GM crops are unnecessary and threaten indigenous food security. The Gates Foundation is now the major funder of GM projects involving nutrient-enriched indigenous crops. Such technological approaches, advocates maintain, are doomed to fail unless they also address the underlying social causes of food insecurity and malnutrition.
⁷

Milk from cows treated with rBGH has become the flashpoint for concerns about GM foods and a major public incentive to choose organic dairy foods; the USDA’s organic rules expressly forbid use of hormones and GM technology. Late in 2009, many countries continued to ban rBGH. In the United States, several states introduced legislation to allow GM-free labels, particularly on organic and other untreated dairy foods. In response, Monsanto organized a pro-rBGH public relations campaign that included its own “grassroots” organization. A spokesman for that group complained that critics of rBGH were backed by Consumers Union and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), “who make a profit, living and business by striking fear in citizens.” Perhaps, but widespread public opposition to rBGH induced mainstream food processors and retailers such as Dannon, General Mills, and Walmart to stop buying rBGH-milk and to require suppliers to guarantee milk as GM-free: “We’ve done focus groups, and people don’t want it.”
⁸
Without a mass market for rBGH milk, use of this hormone seems unlikely to continue.

As predicted, the failure to label GM foods continues to pose problems for the public and for industry. Because the vast majority of processed foods contain unlabeled GM oil, protein, or sweetener ingredients, organic foods are viewed as an increasingly attractive option. Organic suppliers such as Whole Foods, concerned that GM pollution might destroy consumer trust in organics, created the Non-GMO Project: “Our shared belief is that everyone deserves an informed choice about whether or not to consume genetically modified products.” The Non-GMO Project seal guarantees a GM level of no more than 0.9 percent, the standard used in Europe, where higher percentages require labeling.
⁹

In Europe, McDonald’s has gone GM-free. In 2009, I collected McDonald’s brochures in England and Italy that read, “We’d like to reassure
you that we don’t use any GM products or ingredients containing GM material in our food.” In contrast, Hershey’s British products use GM ingredients and say so. The company labels Reese’s Nutrageous candy bars: “Contains: Peanuts, Genetically Modified Sugar, Soya and Corn.”

Labeling may be a problem easily solved, but positions on GM foods are unlikely to budge until the benefits of food biotechnology are seen to accrue to the public as well as to the food biotechnology industry.

In contrast, since this book first appeared, value-based views of microbial contamination have shifted somewhat toward science-based views as a result of a seemingly unending series of outbreaks and recalls. Microbes continue to account for massive illness in the United States. Although noroviruses remain the leading cause, toxic forms of
Salmonella
and
E. coli
get far more attention, perhaps because they cause more serious harm to health and show up in the riskiest foods: meat, poultry, and produce.
¹⁰

The most prominent examples of recent clashes between science and values are those involving raw foods, particularly milk and oysters.

The Raw Milk Debates
. Although dairy foods account for only 3 percent of reported cases of foodborne illness, a whopping 71 percent of those cases are caused by pathogens in raw milk.
¹¹
Raw milk creates little dread or outrage in the public, but it enormously distresses health officials. Because pathogens are easily killed by pasteurization, deaths caused by pathogens in raw milk are easily prevented.

Safety scientists are baffled by the raw food movement, whose constituents believe—against all evidence—that raw milk is healthier and safer than pasteurized milk. To read the statements of raw milk advocates is to enter a parallel universe in which the usual standards of scientific judgment are thoroughly discounted. Such views are most prominently expressed by the Weston Price Foundation, named after the author of
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
(1939). With considerable justification, Price argued that many of today’s chronic diseases could be prevented by avoiding highly processed and refined foods.

The foundation, however, interprets this advice as “avoid pasteurization.” It recommends “raw whole milk from grass-fed cows . . . produced
under clean conditions and promptly refrigerated.” One would hope that by “clean conditions” the foundation means a HACCP plan (discussed in
chapters 2
and
3
), but it does not say so. Instead it says that “natural protective systems can be overwhelmed, and the milk contaminated, in situations conducive to filth and disease. Know your farmer!” Raw milk, it says, contains many antimicrobial and immune-supporting components (but, I would add, so does pasteurized milk). The foundation argues that grass feeding is healthier for cows, as well it may be. But researchers find grass-fed cattle capable of shedding almost as much
E. coli
O157:H7 as those in feedlots. To the question “Is it safe to consume raw milk?” the FDA’s answer is blunt: “No. Raw milk is inherently dangerous and it should not be consumed by anyone at any time for any purpose.”
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